The Private Voting Research Sprint round of Prop House is coming to a close with less than 2 days left to vote.
If you are still lost in all the tech talk and foreign abbreviations, the links and information below might help you decide what proposals you should vote for.
Lsankar’s Twitter thread
the @nounsprophouse private voting round has brought in some of the best teams at the intersection of cryptography and eth dev
20 total proposals! check em – prop.house/nouns/private-…
I’ve been reviewing them before voting and wanted to share my faves (in submission order)🧵
TNS episode
On Thursday, TNS + The Verbs team will be cohosting a panel of promising zk builders, selected by @eladmallel, @lakshmansankar, @davidbrai & @noun40__ to share their @nounsprophouse Private Voting Round proposals.
RSVP below so you don’t miss it 👇
https://t.co/CYHwkK7s2w
Bixbite’s notes
I kindly asked if I could share the notes Bixbite made when she was going through the proposals herself, and she agreed. Below are her brief notes, mostly focused on the mechanisms the proposers want to use to implement private voting.
Bixbite is a member of one of the submitting teams (“Prop 20” below), so her notes might be biased.
Prop 1: DeFROST
Mechanism used: zkContract, SDKs, and ZK-ZK Rollup
Process distributed key generation (DKG) & threshold homomorphic encryption (tHE)
Committee node will need to be involved
Combo of voters and their votes being anon
Prop 2: Aragon & Aztec
Mechanism used: validating ethereum storage proofs using Noir, Multi-party computation (MPC), delay-relayer, time lapse
phase 1 voters are anan, phase 2 add in a delay-relayer service (voter and number of votes is anon), phase 3 adding in time-lapse (VDF) service voters can encrypt their vote so now voter and vote can be anon)
Prop 3: Axiom
Mechanism used: Poseidon Merkle Root, SNARK
Break down the delegates into storage proofs, construct a Poseidon Merkle tree, verify the SNARK on-chain
Our proposal does not "solve" private voting on its own. Instead, we are providing the backend infrastructure to enable other teams to create the optimal user experience for private voting: this means faster ZK proofs in-browser and lower gas costs, while maintaining the highest security standard.
*So this would not solve the issue, but it provides infrastructure for other teams to create optimal user experience for when private voting does get figured out
Prop 4: RVTL
Mechanism used: utilizes off chain computation
Phat contract deployed on Phala Network
Prop 5: Nouns Vortex
Mechanism used: Tornado cash / VoAn / Semaphore, homomorphic El Gamal encryption, ethereum proofs (Groth16)
Tornado cash has been flagged and banned in the US before, would be concerned about potential legal issues around this
Prop 6: Anonymous
Mechanism used: validating ethereum storage proofs using Noir, Homomorphic Encryption, Verifiable Delay Function (VDF)
Prop 7: O(1) Labs x Tally
Mechanism used: recursive SNARKs and partial homomorphic encryption
Prop 8: Curve Labs
Mechanism used: ZK - Merkle Tree construction, Spartan-ECDSA
Will explore both ZK options along with verifiable off chain compute
Prop 9: zkPoll
Mechanism used: arbitrary merkle roots, zk-nullifier-sig
inspired by Semaphore & verifiably deterministic signatures on ECDSA (zk-nullifier-sig)
Noun holders will have to install a wallet extension to their metamask which will make their votes anon
Prop 10: Protecting Voter Privacy
Mechanism used: homomorphic encryption, zk-proofs,
based on the Helios voting protocol, customizing it for ethereum
Prop 11: Aura
Mechanism used: homomorphic encryption, Verifiable threshold encryption and decryption,
Prop 12: Voting Privacy With Aztec Protocol
Mechanism used: Aztec Network as a relayer (first private ZK-rollup on Ethereum)
Prop 13: Shadow Nouns
Mechanism used: zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption, MPC-HE, merkle tree, multisig EOA
Prop 14: Prons Team
Mechanism used: Layer 2 StartNet, Semaphore,
Prop 15: zkNouns DAO
Mechanism used: ZK proof and relayer, automatic random delay, homomorphic encryption and multiparty computation (MPC), distributed Trusted Execution Environment (Secret Network)
Prop 16: Paralynx
Mechanism used: hashing sha256, Poseidon Merkle Root, Groth16 proofs
- based on Semaphore
Prop 17: Flexible Voting For Nouns DAO
Mechanism used: The development of a shielded pool and delegate contract that enables Nouns holders to deposit their Nouns, then vote via the delegate contract using a zkp.
Allows users to vote fractionally
Prop 18: Privi x Nouns
Mechanism used: MPC, Homomorphic Encryption & Account Abstraction, merkle tree
Prop 19: Timber Networks
Mechanism used: relayer network via trusted execution environment (TEE) - Secret Network - same as prop 15
Prop 20: Submarine Sends SS420 (Bixbite’s Prop)
Mechanism used: Submarine Sends, Homomorphic Encryption, VDF (verifiable Delay Functions)
Upgrade to a 5 year old blockchain privacy system which has been battle tested and proven efficient